Microsoft’s Loss: Ex-Steam Boss Joins Oculus

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Normally when videogame execs are the subject of countless headlines, it’s because they said something fighty or controversial. Or maybe they got an inner-thigh tattoo. Not former Steam brainguy Jason Holtman, though. Truth be told, he hasn’t really said much of anything for quite a while. The man just won’t stay still, is the thing. First he helped pioneer Steam at Valve, then he moved on to Microsoft to focus on “making Windows a great platform for gaming.” But suddenly he left mere months later, never to be seen again. OR SO WE THOUGHT. Now he’s surfaced at Oculus as “head of platform.” When reached for comment, Oculus would not explain who will be the body, nor whether the arms and legs will be made of robot lions.

Here’s what Holtman will be doing at Oculus: “Jason will be spearheading the business development and partnership side of the Oculus platform working closely with Marshall, head of platform engineering, and David, head of worldwide publishing, with a focus on building the world’s best developer and player VR ecosystem. We’re thrilled to welcome him to the team.”

Meanwhile, the Facebook purchase understandably “supercharged” Oculus’ all-matter-devouring black hole of a recruitment effort, so now it’s added more new employees than you can shake a Facebook Facebrick (TM) at:

Neil Konzen, former engineer at Valve and one of the original Microsoft employees

Brian Hook, former engineer at RAD (Telemetry) and the original author of 3Dfx Glide

Adrian Wong, former lead systems engineer at Google[x] (Glass)

Ian Field, former engineer at ARM and co-inventor of Cortex-M

Raul Corella, former head of supply chain at JawBone, Monster, and Leap Motion

Laura Fryer, former GM of Epic Seattle and WB Seattle

Paul Pedriana, former lead engineer at EA

David Moore, former engineer at RAD (Granny)

Kenneth Scott, former art director at 343 Studios (Halo 4)

Seneca Menard, former technical artist at id Software

Paul Pepera, former environment artist at Valve and 343 Studios

Brian Sharp, former engineer at Bungie

Aaron Nicholls, former engineer at Valve, 343 Studios, and Microsoft

Matt Alderman, former engineer at Valve and ArenaNet

Cass Everitt, former GPU architect and engineer at Nvidia

Ross O’Dwyer, former at head of development support at Havok

Douglas Lanman, former research scientist at Nvidia Research and MIT Media Lab

Which is a pretty darn impressive lineup. Click through here to see a bunch of pictures of them all playing volleyball for some reason.

Oculus also announced Lucky’s Tale, a VR-exclusive adventure from Paul Bettner, one of the creators of Words With Friends. I hope it’s a game in which we play as intrepid anthro-fox wunderkind Yalmer Lucky attempting to give animated yet remarkably articulate speeches about the real-life magic of virtual foxality. Somehow I doubt it, though.

But yes, Oculus appears to be soldiering on quite admirably, despite messy lawsuits and all that depressing slow-jam jazz. Where it’ll end up after all this effort is anyone’s guess, but if VR flops, it certainly won’t be because Oculus failed to staff up properly.

Its true, gaming is in a dead zone right now. We need something like this to get some inspiration and creativity back into the industry. I hope it pans out for these guys, they obviously have the passion and commitment. Lets hope they’ve got the business sense to back it all up.

Probably somewhere in the single-digit millions a year, which isn’t all that much compared to the future earnings investors are apparently expecting. (That’s where the $2 billion number comes from: not the current worth, but future growth potential, same as nearly any other tech company acquisition these days.)

let me put this “kindly”, I dont give a shit about VR… See, imo, 3d gaming is already extremely shitty for 99% of the games (specially the fast pacing ones).

VR is just a even worse and painful shit put EVEN closer to your eye!

I get that people have to run about trying to start the new gimmick that will make lots of people spend money before they realize it is useless or worse than that (painful, nausea inducing, possible even worse). So carry on, vr people, carry on…

Spoken like someone who hasn’t actually tried the Oculus. The 720p version is amazing. It’s nowhere near good enough to play games on, but if they could double or quadruple the resolution (which they’re planning on doing) it’d easily be the only type of display device I’d need. The Oculus Rift is simply exponentially better than previous VR and 3D technology. There’s a genuine sense of presence. It’s not for everyone, but it’s absolutely going to revolutionize gaming. In less than 5 years, 90% of games will be VR.